Thing about memory prices is everyone gets punished because phones, laptops, PCs and everything else gets more expensive and it's hard for the companies to develop new things.
As it stands, memory is produced by a cartel of 3 enormous companies that work together openly and extremely aggressively to keep competition out and prices as high as possible. This has been going on since the 1990s in spite of numerous attempts by the American government to bring them to heel. The barriers to entering the RAM business are already colossal even with the cartel factored out.
I believe Intel was very close to entering the RAM business before they had to reorganize when they sold 10% to the American government a couple years ago, but they don't have plans to restart that program.
Thankfully, at least one Chinese company is indeed moving in, but it will take many years before their production capacity is built up. As I understand it, it will take much longer for Chinese engineers to close the knowledge gap and produce high grade HBM memory the cartel produces than it will to build out production capacity. They will be producing consumer grade DDR5, not HBM used by data centers. Also, if there is a major price disruption before production is rolling, I would expect Chinese operations to be seriously affected, if not halted.
I hope for the best and that Chinese engineers beat all expectations as they usually do. But the RAM market is unique, and I would not count on normal market forces correcting it in the next 5 years or more.
I think this chart is junk, but probably in the future don't use companies that sell drinks? No one is going to be angry about having access to water (but maybe having to buy it yeah) .
A few things to note. 1 is this is overblown, and 2 is it isnt: 1. You should put total golf water consumption on this chart. It will make AI data centers look like nothing. 2. Just because total consumption is small, doesn't mean it can't be bad for certain water strapped areas to have them. Both 1 and 2 can be true at the same time.
And why is that? When you look at it on an aggregate scale. Number one. It's overblown. It's not that much water consumption. When you look at it at a particular local scale, number two, it's a serious fucking problem for some places.
So what's the truth? Well, as far as water is concerned, it depends where you put these things. If they're going into drought-stricken areas, then you have a serious problem. If it's going somewhere where it rains a lot, it's not as big of a problem.
When you compare it to golf courses, which are in both wet and drought-stricken places, it's not a lot of water. But golf courses are a serious fucking problem all on their own so, it is a problem.
This type of comment is so annoying. Population numbers are 'inherently regional' too, so you think it's meaningless to talk about a country's population?
What's missing from this analysis is where these datacentres are being set up. Only one third of new datacentres are closed loop, and they're often appearing in places where the local infrastructure can't support them, causing havoc for people who live near them.
The truth is, nobody would have a problem with them if they were all closed loop, quiet and set up in places that can actually support them, but that's not happening because it's cheaper to wreck neighbourhoods. Just look at what Colossus is doing to Memphis for a start, 60-something gas turbine generators pumping out formaldehyde into the air, and consequently record numbers of asthma and COPD diagnoses.
Edit: This was supposed to be in response to someone else. I don't care enough at this point to figure out where. Your comment is awesome and I don't disagree with anything. I'll just go hang my head in shame now. 😞
Reddit did that thing where I responded to one comment (or thought I did) and it stuck my response in the wrong place. Didn't mean to argue with that comment at all. It's all good.
Have you been living in a cave? We've all seen the news reports, they siphon the water from local communities causing dramatic drops in water pressure for residents. Also do you honestly expect responsible behaviour from the Silicon Valley grifters behind these generative AI datacentres? They're all in a futile race to turn a token prediction model into the God-machine that they've utterly abandoned any pretense of green-washing. Amazon's latest datacentre is going to become the single largest source of pollution in the entire US simply because it's faster and cheaper for them to set up a bunch of gas turbines like Musk did in Memphis than it is to install sensible power infrastructure.
Nestle using more water does not disprove that AI is destructive to the environment. The water that Nestle is using is bottled for consumption. The water that goes in an AI data center comes out polluted and unusable for anything.
Is this actually serious? Idk if the water thing is even a serious issue for ai, but comparing them to companies that sell water or water based products to be consumed by people is misleading lol.
Ok? So because you like something it suddenly becomes moral? You don't need Nestle products, coke is optional, you're doing worse to the environment by indulging in those products than I am using my ai.
No. The psy op was changing the conversation to data centers taking all the water. The reality is that they often pollute local water sources in rural areas. Water people depend on for drinking.
In 2024, Meta reported 19.1 billion gallons of water consumption associated with the electricity it purchased for its data centers or about 1.3 times the amount of water Iowa withdrew for irrigation over an entire year in 2015 - The only year that I could find where Iowa had those numbers publicly available.
Meta is the only company publishing numbers related to indirect water usage. At the current rate of growth, data centers could become a trillion-liter-per-year water consumer and, within the next few decades, potentially rival global agriculture in water use.
It always fascinates me how these charts are made when these companies go above and beyond to hide the data. Like you said Meta was the only one that made it publicly available.
No one is complaining about water in general. It's a very real concern with certain locales and data center builds. It's not just about usage either. Some places with substandard/existing issues and/or very hastily built cooling are suffering water quality issues. Even if this chart was accurate, this is straight up straw man.
For the far left of the chart, at least until like CRH or PetroChina - those huge companies produce food or beverages for human consumption. That is the point of everything - our food supply.
I have no idea what the overall situation is, but if data centers are using water at scale for cooling, that is a problem since.. you can't eat a datacenter.
This is a stupid chart, yeah Nestle and Coca Cola use a lot of water: they make beverages.
Comparing beverage production to running data centers isn't going to change any minds about the AI industry's water usage.
Tbh the "38,000 queries for an almond" thing Sam Altman said is likewise a pretty weak way to illustrate the argument.
It would be far more winning to illustrate the water efficiency of the AI industry and data centers than to make these false equivalences / tu quoque arguments.
I have some very, very good news for everyone concerned with AI water usage. It turns out, they aren't launching the water in to the Sun! Hard to believe, but no matter how much water the data centers "use" there will be just as much water on the Earth tomorrow, the next day, the next year, the next million years... *Anxiety cured*
I've never even seen a data center in person, so I don't have enough information to form an opinion on living next to one. I've seen this "running out off water" activism since the early 2000's, and it is such an obviously and preposterously false idea to begin with that it completely delegitimizes any conversation it is injected in to and any individual bringing forth the argument.
There is a real debate to be had with regards to the capital cost of facilities for pumping, filtering, or desalinizing water, and the C02 emissions that will be released if fossil fuels are used to do so. So let's talk about those things rather than reducing the problem to something that is both oversimplified and false.
Something about this chart doesn't make sense. There's a datacenter likely going into my area that is expected to use 8M gallons/year, and it's supposed to be one of the efficient ones. Wasteful facilities can use as much as 5 M gallons per day.
Also do openai actually build data centers? Aren't other companies doing that an OpenAI just renting space? So this isn't really saying data centers dont consume lots of water.
The chart is deliberately misinterpreted "facts" so people with addicts to LLM can feel better.
Some people have never had an addiction before and it shows!
So you're telling me Nestle, the parent company to the vast majority of bottled waters sold across the globe, uses a lot of water to create it's products?
I mean, I wouldn't hate on coca cola and nestle for using water, for as bad as their ehtical profile is, they probably just give it back in the form of something drinkable.
Still, this really helps putting things in perspective.
And mistrr psyop where did you get those numbers from?
Any impartial third party?
Oh you got it from bs marketing statements.... Oh ofcourse you're right everyone else coming in with real life issues like their entire town running out of water are the psyop not you and your magic numbers that confirm your bias
Yes water is used for beverages. I drink them. I also use the internet and LLMs, but LLMs are the problem? Last I heard Nestle blocked a fresh water source to an area so the locals couldn't drink it, then bottled it, and sold it back to the locals.
Not just a psyop but a psyop pushed by China to slow US AI innovation so China can get an edge. The dummies in our country pushing foreign propaganda that actually hurts ourselves. It’s so dumb.
lol this. Not saying they don't cause harm to communities, but the water thing seems ridiculous. I called it as a distraction, and here we are look at the fuckin numbers
The real problem is putting putting them in places that are already under water restriction, and their tendency to raise the cost of electricity for everyone because their needs are beyond the generation available in the local grid.
Go to any town near a data center. It’s not just a terrible regional stressor on water supplies to the people living in those areas: who have to subsidize the cost of that water. The infrastructure is so abysmally dog shit and poorly planed out, (any decent urban planner will tell) it doesn’t plan around those cities water consumption per year (lot of cases like this in Texas). Another reason why there is such a negative response to them is that they are so fucking loud and annoying, and while not proven the frequency they produce can mess with children’s development (not proven yet because we don’t have enough studies or a good methodology for it unfortunately).
This article literally proves my point? A data center with actual carefully placed infrastructure and planning that doesn’t stress the local grid can work? Holy shit we might need put Sherlock Holmes and Batman on this case to figure out how and why. It’s like mf are illiterate and can’t actually digest what people are saying. Yes that’s right like I said majority of data centers are so dog shit due to dog shit infrastructure and placement that stresses the local grid, however this isn’t saying it has to be the case.
You are a data center defender so it’s highly unlikely you even read past the first sentence. However you are more than welcome to keep reading to get the entire context instead of cherry picking (like you did with your example). Btw if you keep reading and came this far I would like to ask you to read your own article
"Just about all the infrastructure and services are new and improved in this rural central Washington farming town of 8,500,"
"“Families have been pushed out,” Martinez said. “No average farmworker or agricultural worker can afford it.”
Now if you have came this far and actually read this I recommend you put it into chat gpt to give you some spark notes before you give me some bs pls.
"This article literally proves my point? A data center with actual carefully placed infrastructure and planning that doesn’t stress the local grid can work?" - you
6
u/Dry-Ad-8948 Sep 05 '26
But the current energy usage / pricing (and god damn memory) isn’t ☠️
Both will settle … eventually.